


The Girl Next Door

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 20:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: inspired by Hayley Kiyoko's "Girls Like Girls" music video





	The Girl Next Door

**Author's Note:**

> from on anonymous request on tumblr

It started with a birthday party.  
  
Evie's turning five coincided just so with the move to a new neighborhood, and as such, her social-climbing mother invited all the mothers and fathers and all their children to a lavish soirée under the guise of being for the birthday girl's benefit. One little girl showed up without a father, a tiny little blonde with a guard in her eyes and dimples in her round cheeks. Dropped off at the front door by a mother who promptly turned tail and disappeared back down the sidewalk, Evie's young next door neighbor stood quietly, shyly in a corner for the better part of the birthday.  
  
Amidst the games and the music, the anticipation of cake, Evie didn't even notice her until she couldn't help  _but_  notice her. Green eyes still guarded, but intelligent, carefully watching everything around her and even more so carefully watching the birthday girl cautiously approach her. Even at her age, Evie knew it was rude to stare—mother had made that very clear—but she just couldn't help herself as she stood before the little girl, hands daintily behind her back and swaying in her Mary Janes.  
  
"My name's Evie," she said it simply, but quickly caught herself and remembered her proper manners, like mother was looming right there behind her. "I mean...hello, my name is Evie."  
  
For a second she worried the neighbor wouldn't even answer her, that she'd be left standing there awkwardly without another word between them.  
  
"I'm Mal."  
  
The sound of her voice brought out Evie's smile.  
  
"Don't you want to play?" she wondered.  
  
Mal's eyes gazed past Evie, to the rowdy crowd of children in the middle of the living room, where loud noises and too-fast movements were the order of business. She quickly shook her head. Evie was a very intelligent little girl, she could read that shake of the head just as well as any Dr. Seuss story.  
  
"...I have coloring books in my room," she offered. "Do you like to color?"  
  
Then Mal nodded, very fervently, very eagerly. Another smile from Evie as she held out her hand. Mal didn't hesitate, not with the prospect of blank pages just waiting to be colored hanging before her. She took Evie's hand right then and there, and the birthday party went without its guest of honor as two new neighbors disappeared into their own little world of crayons and colored pencils.  
  
Many words and feelings would come to describe Mal and Evie's friendship as they grew up, as the years passed. "Inseparable" had to be the most prominent one. From sixth and seventh birthdays where Evie respectfully requested to forgo a party in favor of a day at the park and a day at the zoo with Mal. Mother hadn't been too happy with Evie's withdrawing from the spotlight, but she  _had_ been respectful in asking, after all. Polite. Obedient. And if obedience wasn't rewarded, how would she ever keep Evie chained to it? So six years of age saw Evie and Mal at the park, seven years of age saw Evie and Mal at the zoo.  
  
Inseparable. Evie was there with Mal all through elementary school, always being the first one to race to Mal's side every time she broke out into a fight on the playground, reaching her before even the recess monitors could, the only one who could ever calm her down and spare the hapless child who had done whatever to find themselves on the receiving end of Mal's fist. She was there when Mal would clamber over the fence and into Evie's backyard, sporting fresh cuts and bruises that had nothing to do with fights at school. Evie would silently take her hand, sneaking her into the house and up the stairs to the bathroom, where Mal would sit on the cold tile floor with a vacant expression while Evie pressed a Disney princess band-aid to her cheek or her arm or whatever happened to be all scraped up.  
  
Memories of those vacant expressions and empty eyes would haunt Evie all the way to middle school, where she started to see them more and more. It was near the end of seventh grade when they sat together on Evie's bed, rewarding the finishing of their homework with the watching of a movie.  
  
"...Would you miss me if I died?"  
  
At her fifth birthday party, Evie had smiled at the sound of Mal's voice. This time, she went absolutely ice cold at the sound of it.  
  
"What are you talking about?? Of course I would!!" she said a bit too loudly.  
  
Mal was looking over at her with those ever-guarded eyes, and one of those long-standing cuts scratched into the side of her face again.  
  
"You'd be the only one," she said with a dark laugh.  
  
Evie had only gotten smarter as she got older. She knew that tone in Mal's voice and all that it implied.  
  
"M..." tears sprang to life in her eyes right away. Mal actually gasped when she caught sight of them.  
  
"...Evie, I didn't mean—"  
  
"Yes you did," Evie snapped.   
  
It was only a split-second spark of anger, one that quickly burned itself out and turned into a shaky body throwing its arms around Mal's neck.  
  
"Mal, please don't. If you do, your mom wins, everyone who's ever been against you wins, and I  _know_  how you hate to lose so please—!!"  
  
"Evie..."   
  
All it took was a hug from Mal to smother Evie's fears, something warm and soft that betrayed any notion of cold, hard intentions.  
  
"E, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that to you. I was just thinking out loud. You know how my head gets," she said soothingly.  
  
Evie did know. Sometimes her best friend's head got dark, very dark, but here on the bed with their movie long-forgotten in the background was the first time that darkness had ever terrified Evie.   
  
"...Please don't leave me," she whispered.  
  
Mal could feel the collar of her shirt growing wet with Evie's tears.  
  
"I’m not going to. I  _can't."_  
  
"Promise," Evie spoke as firmly as she could on a shaking voice.  
  
"I promise."  
  
She knew there was pain deeply rooted inside Mal. Sharp and jagged like a piece of broken glass lodged squarely in her heart. Some of Mal's days were better than others, sometimes her laughter and her smile glowing like sunshine made Evie forget, forget how it killed her to know that Mal walked around every second of every day with such hurt inside her, hurt that only grew and festered every time she stepped through that front door of hers. Evie always wanted to take away the pain, she couldn't stand the thought of the pain ever taking away Mal.  
  
There, on Evie's bed, with their movie long-forgotten in the background, was the first time Evie wanted to kiss her.  
  
It was a startling and jarring thing to realize. Everything around Evie had always told her that she should want to kiss a boy—the movies, the books, mother constantly asking what became of Chad, the handsome young boy who had been Prince Charming in the school play of Cinderella. Nothing in the world had ever told Evie that girls could wish to kiss girls. So she buried the flare of feeling right then and there, forgetting it had ever shown itself.  
  
The summer after eighth grade was memorable for one hot afternoon with Evie's bathroom window open, the door locked tight with overturned boxes of hair color laying empty on the counter. It was one of Mal's good days, and one of Evie's best, with laughter and light hearts filling the afternoon as Mal dyed her hair purple and Evie dyed hers blue. It had been Mal's idea, and Evie, knowing mother would flip, readily agreed. She didn't ask why the boxes of hair dye had come without a bag or a receipt, she just went right along with it, parked on the edge of the bathtub with a blue-spattered towel wrapped around her shoulders.  
  
She was more sad to see Mal's blonde go than she was to see her own brown go, but it was all worth it when she stuck Mal's head in the sink and watched color run down the drain before revealing Mal's brand new purple. When their hair was dry, and bathed in vibrant color, they stood side by side and admired themselves and one another in the mirror, Mal's fingers trailing through strands of blue more than they did strands of purple.  
  
"It's beautiful," Mal said.  
  
About Evie. Not herself.  
  
"Yours is beautiful too," Evie grinned.  
  
Mal smiled, the bright smile that looked and felt remarkably like sunshine, cutely tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Something Evie had never, ever seen her do.  
  
It had been over an entire year, but there it was again—the longing to kiss Mal. For Evie to tangle her fingers in that fresh purple and taste the lips that weren't split and busted up this week. But she and Mal were best friends, and best friends only kissed if they were girl and boy, the way those same movies and books had always told Evie. It was harder to do this time, with her and Mal on the floor, leaning back against the bathtub and trying to find relief from the summer heat on the cool white porcelain, but Evie stowed the feeling away again. Thought nothing of it. The way an idle mind looks at the clouds and sees shapes that aren't really there, Evie knew this meant nothing. An idle mind thinking idle thoughts that drifted in and drifted out just like the clouds did.  
  
Freshman year. The history room was split down the middle, desks on one side of the room facing desks on the other side of the room. Not only were Mal and Evie in the same class period, but sitting squarely opposite each other across the divide, making it all too easy for Mal to pull faces during droning lectures, all too difficult for Evie to stifle her laughter.  
  
It made it all too easy for a boy named Ben to start noticing Mal from across the room.  
  
"He's looking at you again," Evie told her one day at lunch, side-eyeing Ben at another table with the likes of the popular crowd.  
  
"It's annoying," Mal's hand curled into a fist. An automatic and reflexive reaction.  
  
Evie put her hand on top of that fist in a calming gesture, another automatic and reflexive reaction.  
  
"M, it's only September and you're already one fistfight away from suspension."   
  
"So?"  
  
"...Suspension keeps you at home with your mother."  
  
Mal unclenched her fist.  
  
Ben was relatively new, from a rich family. One of the popular kids, but not in the way that Mal and Evie knew popular kids—he talked to them as if they were equals. Where Chad and Audrey and even sweet little Jane on occasion would turn their noses up at them, the freaks with the blue and purple hair who refused to go natural again even after a month of detention and the threat of suspension, Ben spoke to them with smiles, and good mornings, and goodbyes accompanied by waves. Although, he tended to speak to Mal with sweeter smiles, softer good mornings, longer waves.  
  
"Maybe he likes you," Evie mused as she and Mal walked home from school.  
  
"Please. Why would anyone like  _me?"_  Mal scoffed, her hands in her pockets.  
  
_You're passionate. So smart. Beautiful. Your eyes glitter, you sing, your lips make those incredible little smirks when you're amused or happy..._  
  
All thoughts that suddenly came rushing to Evie's head, all reasons why someone could possibly like Mal.  
  
All reasons why  _Evie_  liked her.  
  
Evie was still getting older, and she was still getting wiser. Wise enough to know that it didn't matter what the books and movies and tv shows said, it couldn't change what she felt. The longings to kiss Mal, the brown eyes always drawn to her face, the little smiles Evie wore when she watched Mal doing her homework, or drawing, or just  _being..._  
  
Evie laid awake in bed that night, thinking about it. Not once had she ever longed to kiss boys like Chad, or find her eyes drawn to their faces. Only Mal. Mal who had been there for the majority of Evie's life, ten years together as partners in crime, a dynamic duo. This changed everything, and Evie wanted nothing to change. She wanted to kiss Mal, hold Mal, do all the things with Mal that the movies said girls and boys should do together, but at the end of the day she still wanted Mal to be her very best friend. Too afraid to mess with what they had, this would just have to be the one secret that Evie couldn't confide in Mal, even when Mal trusted her with all her deepest and darkest. Telling Mal how she felt was absolutely out of the question.  
  
Mal had more of her good days than her bad the later half of freshman year on account of her mother, who was no longer content to just putter around the house berating Mal and now spent the majority of her time never home. The girls took great advantage of it, of a house to themselves without the evil eyes of Mal's mother or the beady eyes of Evie's watching and lurking. Freedom was what they had, freedom to run up the stairs and blast music and eat themselves sick on entire tubs of ice cream. It was a dream come true, a world where it was just Mal and Evie, Evie and Mal.  
  
After school, Evie would say goodbye to Mal at the front door just long enough for a shower, to change her clothes, to abandon her backpack by the bedroom door before darting past her mother and down the sidewalk to Mal's house. She would knock, didn't need to use the doorbell because she knew Mal was always nearby, listening for her arrival. The fifteen or twenty minutes they were apart would feel like days, for when Mal opened that door the two would hug and laugh and smile as if reuniting after an eternity. They'd throw themselves on the couch with bags of chips and the remote, spread out in all manner of comfy cozy positions that would have Evie's mother screaming for not being "ladylike".   
  
It was simply the best. When Mal decided her tattered sofa pillow wasn't comfortable enough and sprawled all over Evie instead, it was simply the best. Inseparable was the story of their lives, had been all the way from days of preschool to freshman year. Which is how Evie was the first one to know when Mal and Ben became a thing. She saw it coming, but somehow, it still came as a surprise to Evie, a nasty shock.  
  
The signs were all there. Ben joining them more and more at lunch and Mal's eyes not flashing with the urge to deck him in the face, Ben's name coming up in Mal's conversations, Mal staring back when Ben stared in history class.  
  
Soon enough, Mal opening the front door for Evie became Mal and Ben opening the front door for Evie, Ben who didn't live in their neighborhood yet still managed to beat Evie to Mal's house in the short time it took her to shower. Ben who stood there in the doorway with his arm around Mal's waist.  
  
Evie had worried that she and Mal being a thing would change their worlds, and as such, feared the exact same from Mal and Ben being a thing. But their bonds proved far, far stronger than that, another thing the stories in the movies had gotten wrong—a boy driving a wedge through even the most steadfast friendships would not be Mal and Evie's norm.  
  
All their lives, Evie's house had been the designated sleepover spot. With an upturned nose and beady eyes, Evie's mother had made it clear time and time again that she didn't approve of the ratty, upstart girl next door, but didn't dare soil her hands lifting a finger to outright bar Mal from the house. Yet with Mal's mom now taking unannounced excursions for days at a time, the rare privilege of Evie getting to spend the night in Mal's room was growing less and less rare. Sitting in their pajamas on Mal's bed with scratchy and distorted music coming from the ancient iPod speaker, night fell quietly around the two.  
  
"You and Ben haven't gone on a date yet?"  
  
"Nope," Mal flatly answered, brushing out Evie's hair as she sat behind her.  
  
Evie couldn't tell if the tone was apathetic or pissed. It was a very fine line with Mal.  
  
"But he's your boyfriend," Evie couldn't wrap her head around it, the same way it took her an entire month to wrap her tongue around the word "boyfriend" in the first place. "You two only see each other here and at school, and I know he's been asking you out."  
  
"I don't feel like going out," Mal shrugged. "Like you said, I see him at school, and I see him here at home, I don't need to be around him any more than that. I just want my space, that's all."  
  
Funny how she never seemed to need space from Evie, glued to her side 24/7. A tidbit that Evie handily recognized.  
  
"What about me?" she asked.  
  
"What about you?"  
  
"You and I are never apart."  
  
With her back to her, Evie didn't see Mal's tiny smile.  
  
"Because I like it that way."  
  
They fell asleep that night side by side, watching tv on Mal's phone, Evie's head nestled in the crook of Mal's neck with her thoughts racing just as fast as her heart. Feelings for Mal always flared when they were this close, on far too many occasions Evie caught herself just seconds before accidentally reaching up and placing a kiss to Mal's cheek, her forehead, the corner of her mouth. But her best friend had a boyfriend; if such gestures weren't off-limits before, they certainly were now. Yet in waking up the next morning, finding Mal on her side with an arm draped over her, all Evie could think about was taking a page out of her best friend's book and breaking some rules. Ignoring some "Off-Limits" signs. Crossing some lines.  
  
She noticed herself noticing Mal as they dressed for school, where her body curved, where age-old scars darkened her fair skin before she pulled a purple t-shirt over her head.  
  
Evie—being Evie—didn't show up to an overnighter with just one outfit for the next day in tow, and in digging through her bag found herself torn between which blue ensemble to wear.  
  
"M?"  
  
Mal had already parked herself on the foot of the bed, tugging her shoes on and glancing up from the laces at the sound of her name.  
  
"This one, or this one?" Evie asked, showing her options off to Mal.  
  
And Mal made a grand show of studying each outfit, pretending to deeply contemplate which one suited Evie the best today before promptly yanking her purple shirt back off and tossing it to Evie.  
  
"That one," she grinned slyly.  
  
With Mal smiling at her in just a bra and torn jeans, and the shirt bathed in the wondrous scent of Mal's shower gel, it was very, very difficult for Evie to see those "Off Limits" signs. She wore Mal's clothes all the time, and none of those times were ever accompanied by burning cheeks and a pounding heart the way this time was. Mal hopped off her bed to come right over when Evie was dressed, fingers taking the hem of her shirt and straightening it out so it fit just so on Evie's body.  
  
Just so.  
  
Evie caught Mal staring before Mal did, a far-off green gaze traveling up the length of Evie's torso before focusing ever-so-intently on her face. Evie hated to read into it the way she did, hated the desperate conclusions her emotions instantly jumped to, but...she almost swore Mal was staring the way she stared at Ben in history.  
  
"...You look good in purple," was what Mal quietly said when she found her way out of Evie's eyes and back to reality.  
  
"...So do you," Evie thoughtlessly blurted, herself still lost in Mal's eyes.  
  
"Duh," Mal chuckled, shaking her hair for Evie.  
  
_...Do you think you could look good in blue?_  
  
Evie came so close to asking it out loud, to speaking words with double meanings and searching Mal's face to see if she'd decipher. It was a question she found herself almost asking again and again, when Mal sang to her at night, when Mal's fingers absentmindedly combed out Evie's blue as they sat up in bed and yawned beside each other. She never saw Mal doing any of those things with Ben. Ben didn't know that Mal could sing, and strands of his hair had never felt the touch of her fingers. When the three of them wiled away an afternoon together, Mal and Ben sat side by side. Shoulder to shoulder. Mal and Evie? Mal and Evie made each other their pillows, head to shoulder, head to lap, feet to lap, head to head.  
  
Evie might've found the courage to finally ask her question, if one Friday at school hadn't been so ceaselessly tiring with test after test after test. She was asleep as soon as her head hit Mal's pillow that night, brain spent and body aching from a backpack full of textbooks.   
  
She wasn't awake to see Mal leaning over her in the dark, was too deep in sleep to feel Mal's finger curiously tracing the shape of her lips. If she were, she would've asked her question, for there, in the soft stillness of the night, she might've gotten the answer she was looking for.  
  
The next time Ben joined them for lunch at school, it struck Evie like a bolt from the blue how she'd never seen Mal and her boyfriend kiss. Maybe it was a small mercy, some higher powers gifting Mal and Ben the decency to not do so in front of Evie, or maybe the much bigger mercy was that they hadn't kissed, ever. Evie’s watchful eyes would often see Ben lean over, lean in, with all the same intentions that she herself had almost gotten lost to on so many occasions. But Mal was always a step ahead, suddenly needing to turn this way and that, cast a glance over her shoulder, or duck down and fetch something from her backpack. Ben would always save face with a reflexive smile, a clearing of his throat before segueing into easy conversation.  
  
"So what do you say, Mal?"  
  
Mal had poked distractedly at her fishsticks the entire time Ben talked.  
  
"Mal doesn't do parties," Evie pointed out.  
  
"I don't do parties," Mal repeated for emphasis.  
  
"It isn't really a party," Ben shrugged. "Audrey and some friends just want a place to hang out, and you're the only one with an empty house."  
  
Crowds. Small or large, Mal was never, ever a fan of them. Evie remembered the little blonde at her fifth birthday party, trying so hard to disappear into a wall and wishing the corner of the room was big enough to swallow her whole. The same could still be said ten years later, with a living room full of the popular kids, overlapping conversation, too much laughter, music too loud for her even at its easy volume. She was no longer blonde, and at an age where "little" had graduated to "petite", but still Mal was the same girl fighting to vanish and be left alone that Evie had met for the very first time at the birthday party. Yet this time, Ben's arm around her shoulder stopped her from disappearing with Evie to the safety of an upstairs bedroom, trapping Mal in the living room with names she'd only heard in passing and faces she didn't recognize at all.  
  
Save for one face, wearing full, red lips and topped with a bed of blue hair. Evie, although raised and groomed by her mother to be the belle of the ball, was also woefully out of place among the school's jet-set popular crowd, taking refuge in a spot by the door and in the emerald pool of Mal's eyes. It seemed like an eternity before things started to wind down, things like Audrey's drilling laughter and the moronic drone of Chad's voice. Mal only found an escape when Ben got up to start saying goodbyes to his friends as they slowly trickled out the door, conversations still dragging on a bit as they lingered in and around the doorway.  
  
She disappeared so fast the second she had a chance that Evie didn't see her rush off, even with her eyes absentmindedly on Mal the entire afternoon, but still she knew exactly where to look.  
  
The backyard patio was Mal's spot. Growing up, it was where Evie would find her upon hopping the fence after countless "Come over" texts. Knees drawn and staring out at the weeds in the lawn her mother let grow and fester, Mal on the patio always heralded a mind full of troubled thoughts, or a morning after a vicious nightmare, or a too-long day stuck with her mom—in short, nothing good.  
  
"Party's over," Evie said, stepping through the sliding glass door. "Or not-party, whatever Ben wants to call it."  
  
Sunset was not too far off in the calm spring day, the sun high in the sky and warming the pair as Evie settled in beside Mal.  
  
"...I guess Ben doesn't understand your Alone Time thing," she noted.  
  
"One of the many things he doesn't understand about me," Mal sighed.  
  
Evie was the best friend, and as such, always the receiving end and listening ear for Mal's boy talk. She knew Mal and Ben were complete opposites and didn't fit, and that Ben took it in stride and was happily willing to wait it out and see if they would find a place at each other's side. She knew Mal was nowhere near as optimistic, and that their mismatched personalities stressed and grated on her nerves. Evie truly had no ulterior motives whenever she suggested that Mal should end things with Ben if she wasn't feeling what she was supposed to be feeling, but everytime she did, Mal would go silent. Either thinking it over or ignoring the suggestion completely, Evie never knew. She wondered if she should suggest it again, just for old time's sake, but the particular lost and faraway gaze in Mal's eyes today made her think better of it.  
  
"I don't like this," Mal murmured.  
  
"You never have, you're very much the introvert," Evie said, thinking Mal was referring to a house full of preps.  
  
"No, not the party, or not-party, or whatever the heck it is," Mal quickly corrected. "I'm talking about...having to deal with Ben."  
  
Okay, so maybe Evie  _would_  bring it up again for old time's sake.  
  
"M, not that I'd know from experience, but if being with a guy reads as 'having to deal with him' in your head, then you shouldn't be with him. Yes, Ben sees all the amazing things in you, but you guys are just too different to really last. He's your first ever boyfriend, it's okay for you to say goodbye and move on to someone else. Or don't move on to someone else, the choice is yours. But if Ben doesn't feel right, then you should find a guy who is."  
  
Evie was so inside her own head to make sure she carefully picked out the right words that she didn't notice Mal starting to breathe harder beside her, an almost-panicked sort of breathing where air just couldn't come fast enough.  
  
"What if no guy ever feels right?" Mal tensely asked, staring so hard at the weeds she could've burned them with her eyes.  
  
"It only seems that way now because of how things are with Ben, but it's a big world, Mal. I know there's a guy out there for you," Evie promised with a smile.  
  
If they were having this conversation in bed, in nighttime silence, with Evie's head so close to Mal's chest, Evie for sure would've heard and felt the downright whirring of Mal's heart right now. It pounded and thudded in her chest like it would break her ribs, it was what made it so hard for her to breathe.  
  
So hard for her to keep it in any longer.  
  
"What if I don't  _want_  it to be a guy??" she blurted, ripping her gaze away from the poor weeds to meet Evie's eyes with an expression of blind panic.  
  
Not a day went by that Evie didn't remember the moment she came to that exact revelation herself, yet it sounded completely foreign and unheard of coming from someone else's lips. Coming from Mal's.  
  
"...What do you mean?" Evie asked with a frown.  
  
"What if...what if..." Mal struggled for words, eyes darting distractedly all around as if she could find her thoughts hanging there in the air around her. "...The dates, and the hugs, and the kisses, and all the other things I'm supposed to be doing with Ben, what if I want to do them with a girl instead? What if I've always thought about being with a girl but I just...I don't know, brushed it off because I knew that wasn't the way it was supposed to work?"  
  
Evie wondered if her ears were really ringing right now or if it was just all in her head.  
  
"...You've  _always_ thought about being with a girl?" she whispered.  
  
Hearing her own words repeated to her made Mal suddenly take a mental step back, as if she'd said too much, as if realizing she'd made a mistake in telling all this to Evie and that this was the one secret she should've just kept to herself.  
  
"Well, for a while, at least. Maybe not always. For a while," she tried fruitlessly to cover her tracks. "...Been thinking about it more and more ever since I started dating Ben."  
  
"Because you wanted to be dating a girl."  
  
Listening to it being said out loud sent a jolt through Mal, a plague of nasty thoughts berating her for saying far too much, for daring to let all of this slip.  
  
"...Forget it, E. I'm sorry. Forget I ever said any—"  
  
Mal had made to scramble to her feet, intending to hurry back inside and let everything drop, but Evie caught her by the arm, kept her down on the patio by her side.  
  
"Mal, it's okay," Evie firmly told her, the same firm way she wished someone would've told her back when she first started fretting and worrying about how she wanted so badly to kiss Mal.  
  
"Is it?" Mal clearly fretted and worried herself, not convinced of Evie's words.  
  
Evie put on a smile, bright and beaming, knowing to say all the things she had to tell and teach herself over the past few years.  
  
"Sometimes girls like girls, just like boys do. It happens, M. It's nothing new."  
  
Mal didn't know what to do now that she'd heard it, a weight that should've been lifted instead pressing down on her even harder. With a deep sigh she laid her head on Evie's shoulder, scooting close to her like huddling near a fire for warmth.   
  
"...It's okay," Evie said again. Partly for Mal's benefit, partly for her own.  
  
"What if it isn't? What if this is just the proof that my mom and everyone else has always been right and I'm just the screwed up freak from the wrong side of the tracks?"  
  
"You are not screwed up," Evie almost snapped, her tone kept civil enough only by the fact that this was Mal she was talking to. "You carry a whole lifetime of pain thanks to your mother, but that just makes you hurt, not broken. Of all the things in the world that could possibly make someone broken, liking girls is  _not_  one of them. Who you like defines who you are in all the best ways, not the worst. And Mal...I know what you're feeling."  
  
She heard Mal's breath catch, felt her go stiff with surprise. If Mal weren't already so comfortable she would've lifted her head to look at Evie with gaping shock, but as it was, she stayed nestled on her shoulder.  
  
"...You, Evie?"  
  
"Why else would someone as pretty as me not have a boyfriend already?" Evie joked, trying to lighten the mood. "...Yes, Mal. Me. I think about girls the same way you do. Or, at least...one girl in particular."  
  
Evie feared it was too soon to let that loose the very second it passed through her lips, but it was already too late.  
  
"You like someone?" Mal gasped. "Who?? What's she like?"  
  
"...Like a big mystery to everyone else, but not to me. I know her inside and out. She's tough, because she's always had to be, but never afraid to let her guard down with me, and for as long as I live I'll never betray the trust she has in me."  
  
"...She must be very lucky, being cared for by someone like you."  
  
"I don't think lucky would ever be a word she'd use to describe herself, that's just how she is. I think I'm the lucky one, though. Lucky to have spent all this time with her, to have one person in the whole wide world I can always trust to be at my side...lucky to have found her scared and alone at my fifth birthday party, where I took her by the hand and unknowingly made a silent promise that her and I would never be alone again."  
  
They didn't know it, but their hearts raced and beat as one just then. Frightfully, somehow both sure and unsure at the same time as Mal lifted her head from Evie's shoulder to stare at her with wide and innocent eyes. A childlike innocence that was never even worn on her face as an actual child, the kind of innocence that wondered where rain came from, why stars twinkled at night, what made the moon change shape.  
  
The innocence of a question that desperately needed to be answered. A question of what would happen if Mal were to let everything go and just kiss Evie, right here and right now. Eyes traced the shape of each other's lips with intent stares, like studying a map of the journey ahead and gathering the courage to dive right in. Evie leaned in, finding her courage first, and Mal was not far behind, eyes already falling shut in heart-pounding anticipation.   
  
"Mal??"  
  
Ben's voice and the sliding of the patio door abruptly came at the same time, shattering the spell over the girls like his rough tug threatened to shatter the glass.  
  
"Ben..." his name came out lower than a whisper when Mal's lips spoke it.  
  
For all his experience with almost-kisses, Ben knew exactly what they looked like.  
  
"Mal, what...what is this??" he demanded, focus wildly darting back and forth from Mal to Evie. "You were about to kiss her??"  
  
The two girls sat frozen with their eyes on Ben, deer-in-the-headlights and not even able to fumble for excuses, explanations.  
  
"What, you like Evie? You like  _girls?"_  
  
Evie instantly disliked the tone in which he said that.  
  
"Ben, I..." Mal still fumbled, still struggled.  
  
"...You've been lying to me," Ben nodded to himself, sure in his words. "Pretending to like me and keeping secrets this whole time. I thought you were different than everyone said, Mal.  _Everyone_  told me you were trouble, you were bad, and I didn't believe them! But maybe I should have, I guess the things they told me are all true. You're trouble, and a liar, and a screwed up freak."  
  
Pretty nails of blue curled and clenched in the split-second it took Evie to leap to her feet and slam a fist right into Ben's jaw.  
  
"Don't call her that!!" she screamed. One strike only staggered Ben, but a second followed right after. "Don't  _ever_ call her that!!!"  
  
Mal watched with a gaping mouth as Ben went down, sprawled flat on the patio with an unconscious groan. Fire blazed bright in Evie's eyes as she lunged at him, intent to paint him with her signature blue and a little bit of black, but Mal on her feet and tugging her back by the waist stopped her. A role reversal come full circle, harkening right back to their elementary school days where it was Evie who played peacemaker to Mal's rage and Mal's fists. This time it was Mal on the peacemaking end, Evie on the end of adrenaline and heavy breaths and a need to dish out revenge for hideous, ugly words.  
  
"Evie, Evie! Look at me!" the smaller Mal had a bit of a fight to keep Evie from escaping her hold, but the sound of her voice started to do the trick.  
  
She spun Evie around in her arms, seeing how hot tears doused the flames that sprung to life in her earthen eyes.  
  
"...Nobody talks about you like that," Evie whispered in a shaking voice. “Ever.”  
  
So many emotions flooded Mal at once, just as tears came to flood her eyes too. The revealing of her secret, willingly to Evie, unwillingly to Ben, dagger-like words being thrown at her in the moment she expected them the least, relief and fear and freedom and strain crushing her all at once.  
  
And the feel of her fingers curling gently around the back of Evie's neck, pulling her in and pressing a fire-fueled kiss to her trembling lips. Evie kissed her right back like drowning underwater and finally,  _finally_  breaking the surface for air; needfully and desperately, hands and fingers twined in purple to keep Mal right where she needed her. Evie dreamed of one day gifting Mal a kiss, but not even in her wildest dreams did she imagine a second, a third, one after another after another. Kisses that were salty with tears but bright with creeping smiles, glaring sunshine peeking through a dark cloud on a rainy day. When they paused to catch their breath and still their pounding hearts, it didn't stop their touch from lingering on one another, Mal's hand on Evie's warm, wet cheek.  
  
"You knocked out Ben," Mal breathlessly said.  
  
"I did, I really did," Evie fervently nodded, as if just realizing it herself.  
  
"I guess after all these years together I'm a bad influence on you," Mal teased with a teary laugh.  
  
Evie laughed right along with her, burying her face in Mal's shoulder as they fell into a tight hug.  
  
"I've waited for two years to kiss you," Evie admitted in a murmur. "...You're my first kiss."  
  
"You're mine."  
  
Evie liked to believe that Mal meant it in more ways than just a first kiss.  
  
Her fear had always been that a kiss, a confession, anything of the sort would change things between her and Mal forever. And it did. In all the  _best_  ways.  
  
"...So what do we do now?" Evie asked, pulling away from the hug.  
  
"...Anything we want," Mal grinned, newfound freedom filling her heart.  
  
Freedom from her mother had always been one thing, but freedom from herself? Something else entirely.  
  
"What about Ben?" Evie cast a careless glance down at the boy.  
  
Mal just took her by the hand.  
  
"He knows the way out."  
  
Back through the empty house and out the front door, no destination in mind as the sun began to sink in the sky and no destination needed. If Mal and Evie were at each other's side, then they were exactly where they needed to be; with a girl on their arm, a girl in their head, a girl in their heart. Word about them would spread soon enough in their small little town the moment that Ben came to, but someday, maybe long after high school was done, they'd find themselves someplace new, where curious strangers and curious minds would ask the two if either of them had a boyfriend. Mal would smile, and Evie would smile too, both of them exchanging amused and knowing glances with each other before holding their heads high and proudly answering "No". And they wouldn't need to explain any further, wouldn't need to justify themselves or satisfy anymore curious whims. They would know the truth, the truth they discovered that spring of freshman year and would keep with them for the rest of their lives.  
  
They were real, and they didn't feel like boys.  
  
It started with a birthday party, and ended with a not-party; the story that the movies never told and the books never printed. The story of two girls who liked girls, finding exactly what they were searching for right in their own backyards. 


End file.
